America's educators, or 633 of them as I write, have signed a petition in support of Bill Ayers. Read the whole thing here.

Some of it is unobjectionable. It seeks to establish his bona fides as a credible education pedagog. And there's general rhetoric about academic freedom. Fine, fine, fine. Then they get to this:

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---"unrepentant terrorist," "lunatic leftist"---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It's true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Participated passionately? He tried to set bombs. Martin Luther King participated passionately in the struggle for justice. The Freedom Riders. But the Weather Underground?

This is why I'm liberal and not a leftist (there is a difference, right-wingers, and please don't ask me to explain it; go read some books). But I understand that, very broadly construed, this does emanate from "my side." I don't think this document will have any impact on the presidential race, but I just want to go on record as saying I would never sign something with a sentence like that in it.